Graduate Education Leaders Shine in Madrid

As Graduate Education Week continues, read the latest on outstanding contributions to graduate education from the Madrid campus.

Ángeles Encinar, Ph.D.

Ángeles Encinar, Ph.D.

Ángeles Encinar, Ph.D., professor at Saint Louis University, Madrid Campus, got her doctorate in Spanish literature from Washington University in St. Louis in 1988. She has been visiting professor at Stanford University, the University of Texas at Austin and Växjö Universitet, among other international institutions. She has received different grants from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture. The most recent one, of $38,000, has been conferred by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation to continue her research — in collaboration with others professors from Spain, Germany and the United States — on literary short stories from Spanish female authors in the period 1975-2005. This three-year project has concluded with the organization of a prominent seminar and the edition of a book related to this research. Currently she is engaged in an international conference about the works of Carmen Martín Gaite.

Alicia Ramos-Mesonero, Ph.D.

Alicia Ramos-Mesonero, Ph.D.

Alicia Ramos-Mesonero, Ph.D., studied education in Madrid before going to the United States. She received a bachelor's degree from Northern Illinois University, and a master's degree and a doctorate from Northwestern University. She has taught at Northern Illinois University, Northwestern University and University of Missouri-St. Louis. She was a visiting professor at Växjö Universitetet in Sweden and at St. Joseph's University.

Ramos has been teaching at Saint Louis University in Madrid since 1995. She is a specialist in contemporary spanish literature and teaches a variety of literature and language courses, including La Novela Española del Siglo XX, La Narrativa de la Guerra Civil, Cine y Literatura, El Pensamiento Español del Siglo XX, La Generación del '98 and La Literatura del Camino de Santiago. Among her publications there are articles on the works of Juan Goytisolo, Ortega y Gasset, Camilo José Cela, Esther Tusquets, Max Aub, Augusto Roa Bastos and El Camino de Santiago.

She coauthored a bilingual dictionary Diccionario Akal del español coloquial: 1492 expresiones y más and Literatura y confesión, a collection of interviews with Spanish writers such as Antonio Buero Vallejo, Ángel Figuera Aymerich, Antonio Ferres, Carmen Martín Gaite, Dolores Medio, José Manuel Caballero Bonald, Elena Soriano, Luis Riaza and Carlos Álvarez. She has recently published two books La incognita desvelada: ensayos sobre la obra de Rosa Montero and Memoria de las presas de Franco, a pioneering work on the recovery of Spanish historical memory. It examines the theory and meaning of testimonio and how the genre serves to recount the plight of Spanish republican women who were imprisoned in post-war Spain under Franco's dictatorial regimen. This coming summer she will be teaching a new graduate course titled "Testimonio de las presas de la posguerra española" ("Literatura testimonial de las presas de Franco").

Jessica Quick

Jessica Quick

Graduate student Jessica Quick recently completed her master's English thesis, "Community and Exile in Frank O'Hara's Lunch Poems and Federico García Lorca's Poeta en Nueva York," in which she considers urban subjectivity from divergent cultural perspectives within New York City.

Jessica Quick will be beginning a doctoral program in English at Duke University in fall 2013. She is interested in pursuing research in 20th century American poetry, with consideration of the development and historicization of intellectual communities such as the New York School and Black Mountain College. She is also the poetry editor and co-founder of SLU Madrid's literary magazine, Penumbra.